From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Nov 16 2003 - 00:13:51 GMT
Matt, Paul and all:
dmb reminds:
I've been asking for an explanation as to the difference between Rorty's
intersubjective agreement and the kind of "mere" subjectivity that Pirsig
attacks in his critique of SOM.
Matt answered:
"Subjective" only gains its philosophical significance (and its evil tag
"merely") by contrasting to "objective". Saying that somebody is being
"subjective" means you are implying that what he is asserting is only _his_
opinion. By contrast, when somebody is being "objective," they are
asserting the _world's_ opinion. And because the world is the ultimate
arbiter, the world's opinion is as good as gold.
dmb replies:
The world's opinion? Huh? In the next paragraph you will assert that the
world doesn't have opinions. This strikes me as yet another "creative" use
of words, by which I mean you have made it up. Nobody I ever knew or heard
of has ever defined objectivity as "the world's opinion". But even if they
did, this is clearly NOT what Pirsig or the dictionary says. In fact,
objectivity is the opposite of opinion. To quote the honorable Mr. Webster,
objectivity is "the realm of sensible experience independent of individual
thought and perceptible by all observers. : having reality independent of
the mind. Compare SUBJECTIVE." I think its pretty clear that Pirsig uses the
words "objective" and "sujective" in the normal way, in a way that Mr.
Webster would approve of. And I would beg you to do the same. Anything else
is dishonest, unhelpful and confusing.
Matt continued:
But Rorty and Pirsig reject these contrasting terms, do they not? So what's
left?
dmb replies:
Pirsig rejects the terms? No, not exactly. He puts them in a larger context.
What Pirsig rejects is the metaphysical idea that objective reality is the
fundamental reality. He's rejecting "amoral scientific objectivity", "the
metaphysics of substance", etc.. He's rejecting the worldview that says
rocks are more real than ideas. Rocks can be photographed, weighed, and
otherwise measured by scientific instruments and Pirsig never denies that.
The MOQ does not dispute the data in such a case. He's not saying that there
is no such thing as rocks or ideas, he's only saying that this is not the
last word on the matter. He is saying that subjectivity and objectivity
represent static patterns of different kinds, different levels. The various
permutations of SOM assert that one is more real or more fundamental than
the other. That's what Pirsig is rejecting. He's saying that the fundamental
reality is not a static pattern of any kind, subject or object, but
something more primary than either of them. I don't see how Rorty is saying
anything even remotely related to that.
Matt asked:
Come to think of it, what do _you_ think is left after we've diced
"objective"?
dmb says:
I don't understand the question. What do you mean by "diced" objective?
You're asking what left, but I don't see how we've removed anything, as I
explained above. Subject and objects are not thrown away, only viewed in a
larger context. And of course Pirsig adds something; DQ.
Matt said:
Rorty's answer is that, yes, we have collective subjectivity (never have I
really denied it as you seem to imply). But Rorty's not sure what more we
are supposed to hope for. After all, its only our opinions, our assertions,
our statements about truth and falsity. The world doesn't make statements
or have opinions.
dmb says:
Again, you seem to be rejecting an assertion that nobody made. Pirsig
certainly never concerned himself with "the world's opinion". (I can harldy
even imagine what that is supposed to mean.) If anyone has asserted that
Nature has opinions, I'd like to know about it. And please be specific. Tell
us who said it and what, exactly, they said. In any case, I'm glad to see
you confirm that collective subjectivity is basically what Rorty means by
"intersubjective agreements". (Was it really so difficult to explicitly
admit that?)
Matt continued:
Collective subjectivity doesn't leave us in a pit of despair, no more than
Pirsig's redescription of causation into pre-conditional valuation changes
what rocks do. At the level of generality that philosophers play at, all we
can try and come up with are descriptions of the way we behave. Pragmatists
are just betting that our description, ridding itself of the image of Nature
having Opinions, works better and causes fewer descriptive problems. Its
not the case that Rorty is saying that nobody's opinion is real, are all
_merely_ subjective, but rather that everybody's opinion is real, its just
that some people's opinions are more justified than others.
dmb replies:
Pit of dispair? Um, that's not the thing I'm worried about. May I remind you
that my assertion is that Rorty's intersubjective agreement is very much
like the subjectivity that Pirsig rejects in the first place. It is Rorty's
companion assertion, that there can be no final judge, such as a physical
objective reality, that such agreement is just an opinion. Even the most
sterotypical SOMist would go along with Rorty in asserting that some
opinions are more justified than others. Even the most naive of the naive
realists would agree with that. That's exactly the problem. That's what
Pirsig is rejecting. But here's where we get to the really interesting
part....
Matt asked:
And since I read this next quote as Pirsig endorsing intersubjective
agreement, what do you think it means?
The quote, from Lila's Child, note 97, p. 526:
"It is important for an understanding of the MOQ to see that although
'common sense' dictates that inorganic nature came first, actually 'common
sense' which is A SET OF IDEAS, has to come first. This 'common sense' is
arrived at through a web of SOCIALLY APPROVED EVALUATIONS of various
alternatives. The key term here is 'evaluation', i.e. quality decisions. The
fundamental reality is not the common sense or the objects and laws approved
of by common sense but the approval itself and the quality that leads to
it."
dmb says:
Clearly, "intersubjective agreements" and "socially approved evaluations"
means pretty much the same thing. This is what gives us common sense,
sanity, defines the intersubjective space of any given culture. That's not
the problem. Rorty basically says this is all we have, is the best we can
hope for. Pirsig, by contrast, goes on to say that this is NOT the
fundamental reality. Rorty ends at common sense, at intersubjective
agreement, but for Pirsig this is just the beginning. The "appoval itself"
and "the quality that leads to it" is something different than common sense.
Contray to your assertion, Quality and intersubjective agreement are NOT
interchangable terms. Not even close. As Paul put it yesterday and the day
before, "I think intersubjective agreement has to be classified as static
social patterns of authority and the static intellectual patterns they
approve. Therefore, as Quality *creates* static patterns (including
intersubjective agreement), I don't think they are interchangeable." This is
the same mistake that led to your assertion that DQ is a compliment or
"commendatory adjective" and that's why I objected so strongly to it. To put
it it the simplest terms, such an assertion confuses static and Dynamic
quality, which the most basic division of the MOQ.
The distinction between the two is what I was trying to get at with all the
talk about the oldest idea in the world. To put it rather crudely, all
static quality, including intersubjective agreement, common sense, and all
the definitions in Webster's dictionary, exists in a relationship with DQ.
The oldest idea asserts that there is a rightness that holds it all
together. Maybe the things I wrote on November 1st would help here...
While Rorty's intersubjective agreement might bare some similarities to what
Pirsig describes as sanity, that is about as far as it goes. Rorty's truth
is such a flimsy and arbitrary kind of truth, but Pirsig insists there is
something that holds it all together, just as there is something that holds
the glass together and lets you drink. There is a rightness that holds
"sanity" together, and its the same force that holds everything together. He
even asserts that this is the oldest idea known to man. (Mythology expressed
it before there were such things as ideas.)
He paints a picture of reality such that excellence in human life is
achieved when one is somehow in harmony with this cosmic rightness. The
static patterns are variously mastered, extinquished, or otherwise put to
sleep. When one is no longer fighting against or otherwise tangled up in
these static forms, genuine freedom and creativity may be achived. In
religious circles this might be refered to as "getting right with God" or
"obedience to God's will". Its what Campbell calls "following your bliss".
There's no good reason to avoid this spiritual aspect of Pirsig's work. He's
always been looking for the Buddha in one way or another and so the MOQ is
much, MUCH more comparable to Eastern Philosophy and mysticism than it is to
anything like neo-pragmatism. The latter has analogies and contingencies all
the way down, the MOQ has the unfolding of an evolutionary universe in which
all static forms are tranparent to the divine, are shown to be children of
the creator. A neo-pragmatic atheist and physicalist is just naturally gonna
be lightyears away from all that. I don't pretend to speak for Anthony and
I'm not even sure he'd agree with this, but I think its no accident that he
opened with this theme. Its at the heart and soul....
Anthony McWatt quotes THE HYMS OF THE RG-VEDA in Indian Philosophy:
"Rta (i.e. Quality) denotes the order of the world. Everything that is
ordered in the universe has Rta for its principle. It corresponds to the
universals of Plato. The world of experience is a shadow or reflection of
the Rta, the permanent reality which remains unchanged in all the welter of
mutation. The universal is prior to the particular, and so the Vedic seer
thinks that Rta exists before the maifestation of all phenomena. The
shifting series of the world are the varying expression of the constant Rta.
So Rta is called the father of all..."
Thanks for your time, dear reader.
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Nov 16 2003 - 00:16:38 GMT